Chapter 12: The Greek Gift Sacrifice. Destroying the castled position, the importance of the h-file, incorrect sacrifices, winning material.

I found this surprisingly tough given that I've played this sacrifice before in games and thought I was already familiar with it. The problems were tactically pretty difficult and not all sacrifices were winning. I'm hoping this was pretty helping since this tactical motif is pretty common to the main Zukertort opening I play.

20/24 - good

Chapter 13: Evaluating the Position. Essential factors of the position. The decisive role of the position of the king. Material advantage. Open lines.

I was quite concerned this chapter would be super difficult to me, although I did okay. Strategic problems are tough since often going with a "second best" move, which may even be a similar evaluation from a computer can cause you to miss a full 3 points or something like that.

So I was happy to not have any trouble passing, although I never really had a shot at an excellent. I missed 3/12 problems, with no partial credit since I went with a completely different idea/plan.

17/24 - good

July Tactics Summary
My goal was doing 75 standard problems and I ended up doing a lot more. The days I did tons of problems were ones where I missed the first couple/few and then chased my losses the rest of the day. Lol, who knew chess was exactly like poker.

Overall I feel I had a breakthrough on standard problems, not only getting my rating back over 2000 but solidly over. My biggest issue is time. I have no real idea how long I'm actually spending on problems because I often take breaks in the middle due to work/house stuff/distractions. And I definitely am spending a lot of time on problems even without those distractions.

Anyway, here were my results:

Starting Rating: 1953.7
Current Rating: 2069.5 (all time high)

Problems: 168
Accuracy: 58.3%
Average Problem Rating: 2021
Total Points Gained: 115.8
Performance Rating: 2088.0

I'm not sure what I want to do for training for this month. Maybe stick to only 2 standard problems a day and also try to do maybe 5 blitz a day? Or branch out to endgame problems? It seems like switching it up each month isn't a bad idea. I could also go back to doing ~200 problem sets at lower ratings and doing them over and over until I can do them very quickly. Or maybe I should go retest previous problem sets I've done.

Chapter 14: Planning in Chess. How a beginner plays, how a master plays, typical plans, redundant pieces.

17/24 - Good

Chapter 15: An opening repertoire for White after 1.e4 e5. How to construct an opening repertoire, sample games, repertoire 3...Bc5, 4...Bb4, The Four Knights Game.

16/22 - Good

Chapter 16: Destroying the castled position. Methods of attack, Typical combinations (sacrifice on h6, g7, f7, f6, the use of pawns, other tactical motifs.

17/21 - Good

Chapter 17: An opening repertoire against 1.e4. The Petroff Defense, 3.d4, 3.Nxe5.

19/27 - Good

Chapter 18: Exchanging. Exchanging operations, bishop of knight, exchanging to stifle counterplay, exchanging pawns.

19/22 - excellent

Chapter 19: Priorities when calculating variations. Active moves, mental flexibility, three important ideas: the strongest continuation, new candidate moves, how and when to stop calculating.

18/24 - good

Chapter 20: Pawn endings 1. Converting a material advantage, the struggle between the kings: the geometry of the chessboard, the bodycheck, the king's various routes: zigzag, Reti's idea, pendulum, the activity of the king, zugzwang and corresponding squares.

22/22 - Excellent

Chapter 21: Decoying. Speeding up the attack, drawing out the king, discovered attacks.

14/14 - excellent

Chapter 22: Time in the opening. Typical mistakes in the opening, an advantage in development, symmetry in the opening.

19/22 - excellent

Chapter 23: Improving the position of your pieces. Developing all the pieces, coordination between pieces, repelling the opposing pieces, the principle of the worst placed piece.

13/22 - pass

This chapter was by far the roughest of the ones I've done. I'm not even sure I did all that badly. One of the examples the GM playing Karpov didn't even play the right move FFS. Anyway, I'm not sure even strong 2200+ players would get excellent on this without being a bit lucky simply because it seems there are other reasonable moves for several of the problems. But I'm clearly weak in some respects regarding positional play it seems since I definitely have a harder time when a few moves seem fine/good.

August Blitz Tactics
Starting Rating: 1783.4
End Rating: 1817

Problems: 586
Accuracy: 59.4%
Average Problem Rating: 1756
Total Points Gained: 33.6
Performance Rating: 1831.8

August Standard Tactics
Starting Rating: 2069.5
End Rating: 2093.7

Problems: 82
Accuracy: 51.2%
Average Problem Rating: 2100
Total Points Gained: 24.2
Performance Rating: 2110.1

Recaps for the past two months:

September Book Study

Build Up Your Chess (2): Chapter 24 - 19/21 (excellent)
Build Up Your Chess (2): Chapter 25 - 36/40 (excellent)
Boost Your Chess (2): Chapter 1 - 16/20 (good)
Boost Your Chess (2): Chapter 2 - 15/18 (good)
Boost Your Chess (2): Chapter 3 - 18/25 (good)
Boost Your Chess (2): Chapter 4 - 22/26 (excellent)
Boost Your Chess (2): Chapter 5 - 22/27 (good)
Boost Your Chess (2): Chapter 6 - 17/23 (good)
Boost Your Chess (2): Chapter 7 - 21/21 (excellent)
Boost Your Chess (2): Chapter 8 - 24/26 (excellent)

September Blitz Tactics
Problems: 983
Starting Rating: 1804.4
End Rating: 1820.7

Accuracy: 56.3
Average Problem Rating: 1818
Total Points Gained: 16.3
Performance Rating: 1868.7

September Standard Tactics
Problems: 64
Starting Rating: 2092.5
End Rating: 2090.4

Accuracy: 50%
Average Problem Rating: 2101
Total Points Gained: -2.1
Performance Rating: 2101.2

Chessable: 2550 positions reviewed/studied

October Book Study

Boost Your Chess (2): Chapter 9 - 15/19 (good)
Boost Your Chess (2): Chapter 10 - 19/19 (excellent)
Boost Your Chess (2): Chapter 11 - 15/31 (good)
Boost Your Chess (2): Chapter 12 - 21/21 (excellent)
Boost Your Chess (2): Chapter 13 - 18/18 (excellent)
Boost Your Chess (2): Chapter 14 - 20/24 (excellent)
Boost Your Chess (2): Chapter 15 - 18/24 (good)
Boost Your Chess (2): Chapter 16 - 18/18 (excellent)

October Blitz Tactics
Problems: 806
Starting Rating: 1820.7
End Rating: 1841.4

Accuracy: 59.3%
Average Problem Rating: 1812
Total Points Gained: 20.7
Performance Rating: 1886.6

October Standard Tactics
Problems: 40
Starting Rating: 2090.4
End Rating: 2120.2

Accuracy: 52.5%
Average Problem Rating: 2117
Total Points Gained: 29.8
Performance Rating: 2137.6

Chessable: 3103 positions reviewed/studied

You are a ****ing beast man, I mean it.

Hey, someone posted in my log!

A beast who has gone down 1 USCF elo in the past year .

Thanks, though, that is helpful to hear. Especially since sometimes I feel I'm just going through the motions and none of this is making any real difference. On the other hand, I do enjoy doing this stuff (even the opening stuff, to a lesser degree).

My biggest regret is that I didn't start doing this maybe 5 years earlier when I would have been able to play a bunch of OTB rated games. At the time I actually was looking for ways to get out of the house due to "too much" free time. Nowadays getting out of the house is a pretty big ask of the wife as I'm sure you can understand.

Anyway, I think the 30+5s delay games with my neighbor are going to be really good for me as we both seem interested in keeping them up. I have been looking forward to them and really feel motivated to start crushing him every game. Pretty pissed off at draws in our first two games!

November Book Study

I was sick most of the month and didn't; finish the book as I had originally planned.

Boost Your Chess (2): Chapter 17 - 23/26 (Excellent)
Boost Your Chess (2): Chapter 18 - 16/23 (Good)
Boost Your Chess (2): Chapter 19 - 15/17 (Excellent)
Boost Your Chess (2): Chapter 20 - 19/25 (Good)
Boost Your Chess (2): Chapter 21 - 18/29 (Pass)
Boost Your Chess (2): Chapter 22 - 26/33 (Good)

Yusupov gave a warning that chapter 21 was very hard and also that the last 5 problems of chapter 22 were very hard. He wasn't kidding!

November Blitz Tactics
Problems: 596
Starting Rating: 1841.4
End Rating: 1872.6

Accuracy: 57.7%
Average Problem Rating: 1865
Total Points Gained: 31.2
Performance Rating: 1927.1

November Standard Tactics
Problems: 31
Starting Rating: 2120.2
End Rating: 2159.5

Accuracy: 54.8%
Average Problem Rating: 2150
Total Points Gained: 39.3
Performance Rating: 2189.5

November Chessable: 3033 positions reviewed/studied

I also played two more training games (total of 3) with my neighbor (who is unrated but very decent at chess), drawing the first and losing the second (last night). I keep getting into severe time trouble by wasting 5+ minutes on a move fairly early on that simply shouldn't be that important.

For further games I plan to stay up on the clock or within 1 minute the entire time. He plays fairly quickly because he doesn't do well in time pressure. I do much better in time pressure but playing at a 2 to 1 time disadvantage early on in the game without a significant advantage has really not helped me.

Just finished book 5/9 and realized I never did a results summary for book 4. So even though it's not the end of the month, here is my summary for each book:

Total results for Build Up Your Chess 2: 83.24% (447/537 available points)

% of chapter grades
Excellent: 60% (15/25)
Good: 36% (9/25)
Pass: 4% (1/25)

Total results for Boost Your Chess 2: 80.86% (486/601 available points)

% of chapter grades
Excellent: 40% (10/25)
Good: 56% (14/25)
Pass: 4% (1/25)

This series is definitely harder than the first series. Most of my "Excellent" chapters came from the first half of the first book, so I think since then it's ratcheted up a notch and it's very difficult to get excellent in many chapters. There's simply a couple of points that are super hard to get even if I am sharp and seeing things.

That being said, I'm certainly in no danger of not passing any chapters. Well, I kind of was at the beginning of the "blockade" chapter recently since I missed a few of the initial problems. Surprisingly, most of the problems didn't obviously have to do with blockading a passed pawn and I had a hard time knowing what to try to blockade or look for. Instead I wrote down normal moves which were not correct.

I plan to go straight to book 6/9, continuing with the opening memorization and tactics work. Also I really need to keep playing training games with my neighbor. I've been sick the last month so I'm also looking forward to feeling better and hopefully consolidating some of my chess knowledge gainz into chess playing prowess.

How would you assess these books in terms of improvement to your game?

I am starting to get back into chess and I am restarting book 1 of the series even though I was almost finished it when I took a break from chess 2 years ago.

I think my chess knowledge has outstripped my ability to execute the new ideas. Since I've studied much more than played in the last year+ I'm not sure I've improved my game at the moment. Probably at least a little bit. However, there is certainly a chance I'm worse or more inconsistent right now since I have almost too much to think about rather than just playing a simpler game.

I still do enjoy working through the books so I don't see a reason to stop or spend my time in some other way. I've always been eager to get to book 7+. However, it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to do less studying and more playing. But it's much harder to do logistically for me.

What is your rating strength?

Not entirely sure. I'm not FIDE rated, and I think the last time I played I was about 1680 CFC (Canadian).

Just realized this should be corrected (had 10 "phantom" problems counted so my overall performance was quite a bit better than I thought!):

December Summary:

Book Study

Sick a bunch of December too. Seeing an ENT this week so maybe he comes up with something that will help me recover better. Also, little one is 10months so maybe she is close to having a robust immune system. I did have a couple of pushes during the month where I got some book studying in but for a lot of the month I couldn't bring myself to open up a chapter.

Boost Your Chess (2): Chapter 23 - 18/24 (good)
Boost Your Chess (2): Chapter 24 - 17/22 (good)
Boost Your Chess (2): Final - 35/42 (good)
Chess Evolution (2): Chapter 1 - 18/23 (good)
Chess Evolution (2): Chapter 2 - 17/20 (excellent)
Chess Evolution (2): Chapter 3 - 20/22 (excellent)

Blitz Tactics
Problems: 318
Starting Rating: 1872.6
End Rating: 1860.6

Accuracy: 56.6%
Average Problem Rating: 1880
Total Points Gained: -12 (oops! lol)
Performance Rating: 1932.9 (seems odd my performance was significantly higher than my start rating but I lost rating points. probably due to missing more problems when I had a higher "rd" value)

Standard Tactics
Problems: 46
Starting Rating: 2159.5
End Rating: 2161

Accuracy: 50%
Average Problem Rating: 2157
Total Points Gained: 1.5
Performance Rating: 2157.4

Chessable: 3010 positions reviewed/studied (I may stop tracking this as it's kind of tedious and just do whatever I'm due for every day)

I also played one more training game (total of 4) with my neighbor (who is unrated but very decent at chess). I won after he went into an ill-advised tactic. It seems to lose a piece but there is actually a clever way to save it, which he missed. I played much more pragmatically concerning the clock and I think that really is something I finally am getting decent at in medium-length games.

So far I've gotten two books for Xmas/Bday:
1) Mastering Chess Strategy (John Hellsten) - (one of the few books recommended by 2p2's very own curtains: http://www.gregshahade.com)
2) Critical Moments in Chess (Paata Gaprindashvilli) - This is a Kindle book, which I asked for somewhat randomly b/c there aren't too many books specifically for Kindle and I was curious how well it would work on there

I now realize I have no idea when I would tackle either of these books. My queue is something like:

Finish Yusupov 6
Yusupov 7
Yusupov 8
Yusupov 9
Amateur to IM (Jonathan Hawkins)
Critical Moments in Chess
Mastering Chess Strategy
Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual

Not sure if that's the order I should go through them. So I'm basically getting books I may not ready until next year (or ever). I also have a few books that I really would like to go through but am not sure I ever will/would given this workload (for instance, John Waton's Modern Chess duo)

Anyway, if anyone has advice lmk. Maybe just stop acquiring books until it makes sense to.

I only watch chess on Youtube to get rid of life tilt so I have no opinion on books... I'm popping in to thank you for prompting me to have a closer look at Chessable - I'm pleasantly surprised by the fact that creation of private books is free there - that site must be far more comfortable than SCID that I've been too lazy to set up!

GLHF with your studies!

I still do use SCIDvsPC to look into lines and stuff but yeah, I just put them directly into chessable and then it "gamifies" it for me so I actually learn the lines at least somewhat.

The one thing I'm struggling with a bit is that you can't have the annotations show when you're reviewing and, honestly, it's probably more important to memorize some of the annotations than the actual move played in many instances. I'm sure if I bother David enough he'd do something about that but I'm not exactly sure how to optimally do that. Maybe a checkbox to "show annotation after move" and it shows whether you got it correct or incorrect.

Anyway, thanks for the gl, .

https://rutube.ru/video/7b16ec483e73...2c5dac65b7b30/

Wat

Hey, how r u. Have u been playing any tournaments recently, how's the progress coming along??

Also, have you checked out Aargard's Grandmaster Preparation book on calculation?

I've been sick more than 2/3 of my life from Nov. Everything has slowed.

No tournaments, just some training games with my neighbor.

Have not checked out that book. Can't imagine getting to it this decade with what I have unless it became obvious at some point calculation was lagging badly.

January Summary:

Book Study

Sick a bunch of January too (I've said this the last three months, fml). Going to start allergy shots in a week. Hopefully in several months I will see results.

Chess Evolution (2): Chapter 4 - 12/18 (pass)
Chess Evolution (2): Chapter 5 - 10/29 (good)

The chapter I passed I almost got "good" on and it was an opening repertoire against 1.c4. I already have a repertoire for that (Classical Dutch) and I have to admit I am not sure how much I care that I didn't do super well on it. Although it was clear I didn't understand a couple of things when I went to take the test but I'm not sure if that's simply b/c I'm unfamiliar with the system until this chapter or if it's a sign I don't understand chess. Oh well, not too worried about a pass here or there.

Blitz Tactics
Problems: 373
Starting Rating: 1860.6
End Rating: 1891.4

Accuracy: 60.3%
Average Problem Rating: 1865
Total Points Gained: +30.9
Performance Rating: 1948.5 (At one point I had lost ~20 rating points on the month but my performance rating was well over 1900. It really seems weird that can be the case but I still haven't realy figured out how it happens.)

Honestly I think the key to blitz problems is to not blitz when doing them. It's hard to force myself to check things once I think I know the answer, and very frustrating when I lose points for a relatively easy problem b/c I spent a while checking, but too many of these problems have a counterintuitive 3rd move in them or two ways to take that seem similar but one doesn't gain material, etc.

Standard Tactics
Problems: 16 - I simply didn't feel up to doing many standard problems this month as most days I was sick.
Starting Rating: 2161
End Rating: 2155.5

Accuracy: 56.3%
Average Problem Rating: 2105
Total Points Gained: -5.5
Performance Rating: 2155.3

Chessable: 3071 positions - I guess I am continuing to track this but, again, should probably just stop. I have gone back through my repertoires and cleaned up my Dutch one considerably. The next thing to clean up is the Maroczy bind (and play a different double-fianchetto system and/or just play a classic approach to it) lines but not sure if/when I'll do that.

Games
I also played two training games (early in the month) with my neighbor and won both of them. He dropped a piece in both. The first game I think I played solidly but the latter game for several moves I missed that he had a nice tactic that would have won him a pawn. Hopefully even though he didn't play it I've learned my lesson that when you fianchetto our LSB in The Dutch you need to realize the f5 pawn is not defended any longer.

Becoming an even bigger fan of Adhiban!

http://www.qualitychess.co.uk/blog/5858

Here is the most recent training game I played with my neighbor (I've annotated it). The record is now 3-1-2 (after a 0-1-2 start). The time control is 30 minutes + 5 second increment.

https://en.lichess.org/study/aPiz0ow6

If people are interested I can post my other games, although I did go over them with my coach so that's why I haven't been posting them. However, it seems there are now a few players around my strength starting logs and/or popping up (MarkD, Dr.ChessPain, CardsFanInArk) so maybe calling them (and anyone else) out could get a mini-renaissance of activity in at least our logs.

I really should spend time looking at Loki's chess content. However it always seems to be something opening related to openings I have no interest in or it would require sitting down for 10-15 minutes with deep focus to try and figure out wtf is going on. Lol, oh well.

I plan on playing one rated game/week for the next month at the local chess club (and I will be playing in an over 1700 section where I should be one of the weakest players hopefully). My dog has been well behaved when I come back from my training games and I'm hoping that at 11:30pm or whenever it is my games finish he will be relatively calm and I can go sleep in the basement guest room without waking up my wife or the baby. If so, I may continue to play those, although I hate the timing. Who the F wants to play a chess game from 7pm to 11pm on a work night? So dumb. But I just can't make the 3 games on Saturday Quads work so have to find something that does work. If this works well I could also try some Monday g/30 quads randomly. I'm sure that would be quite fun.

February Summary:

Finally healthy for most of a month!

Book Study

Chess Evolution (2): Chapter 6 - 12/20 (pass)
Chess Evolution (2): Chapter 7 - 19/21 (excellent)
Chess Evolution (2): Chapter 8 - 17/19 (excellent)
Chess Evolution (2): Chapter 9 - 19/26 (good)
Chess Evolution (2): Chapter 10 - 24/27 (excellent)
Chess Evolution (2): Chapter 11 - 17/19 (excellent)
Chess Evolution (2): Chapter 12 - 10/29 (good)

Blitz Tactics
Problems: 1462 (this was out of control, I definitely need to do something else if I'm just vaguely bored at work)
Starting Rating: 1891.4
End Rating: 1892.8

Accuracy: 57.3%
Average Problem Rating: 1887
Total Points Gained: +1.1
Performance Rating: 1946.4 (I still have no idea what this actually is since every month mine is quite a bit higher than my rating and my rating change doesn't really match at all)

Standard Tactics
Problems: 29
Starting Rating: 2155.5
End Rating: 2149.3

Accuracy: 44.8%
Average Problem Rating: 2192
Total Points Gained: -6.2
Performance Rating: 2151

Chessable: Kept up with it but stopped tracking it.

Games: Played 1 training game (see link above) vs. my neighbor.

I would like to see the games for sure. I found that game very interesting, although in the comments who was Tony?

Also, I think I'm quite a bit weaker than yourself based on your chesstempo rating. I do like following this log though and I will continue to update mine as well. You do a lot better with Yusupov than I do. I find the problems quite challenging.

Hmm, looks like that link is to the entire series of my games vs. my neighbor?

I'm not really sure how to link to a specific game. The 7th game is the one I most recently played.

Also, I don't know who Tony is. Do you mean Todd? He is YouKnowWho, who was my coach up until a few days ago. He has too much life stuff going on so I may find another coach or I may just go without for a while.

Btw, I really have no clue how strong I actually am at chess. My rating is 1818 and I feel I should be at least that since it was ~1795 after my 5 year layoff and has gone up a bit since my return. The fact it hasn't gone up more indicates to me my practical skill has not caught up to my studying/work. At the same time, I simply haven't played many rated games and so it's a very small sample.

I'm hoping that playing more, which may now be possible since my daughter is 1 and sleeping and logistics aren't as rigid, will help. However, I should be prepared for the very real possibility that getting it to go up may be slower than I like, or nonexistent.

I find the Yusupov stuff quite challenging too. I really need to try very hard and sometimes spend quite a bit of time on some problems.

As for my chesstempo ratings, they started out much lower 2 years ago. I may have simply gotten better at taking their "tests". My blitz rating online has not really gone up, for instance. However, I'm not sure I take it seriously enough for that to mean anything. Anyway, I'm hoping all of these indications mean I may be 2000+ strength now or soon and can start making progress towards that actual rating. It is my main goal and in 2 years I have only gained ~20 rating points or something like that. lol